Potential Toll of a Bell
I can only write this post in a light-hearted manner today because the potential disaster was fortunately averted.
One of today's headlines in the Monitor was:
When I read that, I thought some over-zealous chemistry teacher of some mischievous science geeks decided to play a practical joke on some school goers. Well, that wasn't the case. Turns out, as the headline says, a school was using a bomb as a school bell.
If you've ever visited schools in Uganda, you may have noticed that many reuse old iron wheel rims as their school bells. They beat them with iron rods to indicate the beginning and end the school day, class sessions, lunch, etc... They are hung at the schools like the one in this photo.
Well, I guess someone found a piece of iron in the ground that looked like it could serve the same purpose, and hey, it was free. In a place where cash is a very limited resource, it would make sense to try and reuse what must have been viewed as a rather useless hunk of junk.
Little did they know it was an unexploded bomb. Imagine teachers and students, day in and day out during the school year, beating on this metal bomb hung in the school yard to call school to order?
I wonder how long they used it before it was recognised for it's actual purpose. Fortunately, no one dealt it a strong enough blow to detonate it, and a happy ending can be written: it's been removed from the school and will soon be disposed of.
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